Wednesday Potpourri

There’s exciting doings all over the place, and this Councilman/Counselor can’t find time to properly blog about it all. Â Who wants to pay me to do this stuff full time?

The irascible ThunderPig reports that Dan Eichenbaum (R-Tetley), founder of the area’s 9/12 group, won another straw poll of Republicans, this time in Cherokee County.Â Dr. Dan hopes to face Heath Shuler this November.

Speaking of Heath Shuler, he closed the deal on the North Shore Road. That means Swain County will receive $52 million in compensation for a road never completed. Â Somehow Charles Taylor, who was an Appropriations Committee member for years, couldn’t ever get it done. Kudos, Congressman Shuler.

In other Congressional race news, Virginia Foxx, the woman who always has one eye on the kookier wing of the GOP, has drawn a challenger in NC-05. “Billy Kennedy, aÂ Watauga County talkradio host and community leader, will formally announce his candidacyÂ on February 8 for the U.S. House of Representatives, 5th District ofÂ North Carolina. The â€œBilly Kennedy Caravanâ€ will stretch from Boone to Raleigh that day, with stops in Wilkesboro and Winston-Salem.”

Ellie Johnston attended the Copenhagen climate conference and has a thorough narrative of her experience there. Excerpt:

The political outcome that came out of the conference, the Copenhagen Accord, realizes none of our demands and is characterized by a weak pledge and review framework for key mitigation targets that was left empty of commitments as leaders flew home. As news of the Copenhagen Accord spread in Copenhagen, stories on how it was brokered emerged to provide tinder for a wild fire of political drama and finger pointing.

The Help Haiti Heal concert is at the White Horse in Black Mountain on Saturday and Sunday. This will likely be the musical event of the year.

The amazing crew from the WNC Disc Golf club “will be holding a public input meetingÂ Saturday Feb 6th from 5pm to 7pm at the Montford Recreation Center 34 Pearson DriveÂ Asheville, NC 28801.Â The purpose of this meeting is to gather public input regarding the installation of a newÂ Nature TrailDisc Golf Course atRichmond Hill.” The Disc Golf club is volunteering to do all the installation and maintenance work on the new course on their own nickel. Go tell them you love them.

U.N. Copenhagen agreement: Like a third rate horror movie no matter how many times this agenda has been proven to be a politically motivated false premise based on fabricated “evidence” the beast keeps getting up accompanied by the “obama zombies” howling GLOBAL WARMING. Will the HERO show up for the next election or will the Republocrats continue their reign of terror?

Shad, have you read any history about what happened in Western North Carolina in the 30s and 40s?

People who lived in the mountain valleys that become part of the Great Smoky Mountain National Park were removed from their land with little or no recompense. Read about the Cataloochee in Haywood County as an example of the highhanded actions of our own government.

The came World War II and the Tennessee Valley authority. Several TOWNS in Swain County (and Graham) were put under water in the earlier forties by the government using wartime authority, again with little or no recompense to the people displaced. But the government, to take some of the edge off this rawness of power, promised the people there would be a road built to the Northshore area.

NO, I am NOT in favor of reparations (that’s what the 52 million is). I am in favor of the government keeping it’s promises. I don’t know why, they have an exceptionally poor record in that respect. Ask all the Native American tribes. Ask all the mountain folk yanked from farms they had held for generations.

Free parking is not socialist, it’s just a perk in return for shopping downtown – taking people’s land and livelihood and not keeping your promises, now THAT is socialist.

If climate change wasn’t happening North America would be under an ice cap, or the “little ice age” would not have happened,but can the U.N. TAX and supranational government structure change that? This is a naked grab for power by an unelected, unaccountable group of internationalists using science (or lack of) as a trojan horse to bring about world government.

At the United Nations Bretton Woods Monetary Conference back in 1944, the three-pronged economic framework for a fully integrated world was established. The U.S. Senate confirmed two of the three: the World Bank and International Monetary Fund. The U.S. did not pass the International Trade Commission, the precursor to the World Trade Organization. In its place, 23 countries ratified the General Agreement on Trade and Tariffs. Between 1948 and December, 1994 when GATT/WTO was finally passed by a lameduck Congress, fourteen GATT “Rounds” had been held, including the Dillion, Kennedy, Tokyo, and Uruguay Rounds. At each of these meetings further concessions were made in the negotiations of trade tariffs. Major categories for trade include telecommunications, maritime transport services, Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS), Financial Services, the environment, competition policies, government procurement, technology, labour, agricultural reform, and textiles. The GATT is more than 26,000 pages long and no single article could ever explain or comprehend what this global agreement really does or means. This massive Agreement whose intent it is to break down ALL of the TRADING BARRIERS IN THE WORLD, will change everything. Given the above negotiations and the length of the GATT document, it should be noted that trade is not “free.” GATT/WTO represents a complete dismantling of commerce and manufacturing as presently known. (WTO Press Release on Financial Services, December 9-13, 1996)

So, Ralph, Socialism is–to you anyway– a catch all phrase for things you don’t like, not an actual ideology. Thanks for clearing that up (and for the history lesson, as a Yankee interloper I am incapable of understanding or appreciating mountain culture and history).

ps,I hope you won’t be cashing anyone of those Socialist SS checks anytime in the future.

Why do you want to argue, Shad? I don’t get social security, not old enough. You’re the one equating everything to socialism, I equate it to bad decisions made by stupid people in government from both parties over a period of time and who fail to think to find simple solutions for simple problems.

As to you being a Yankee interloper “incapable of understanding or appreciating mountain culture and history” – I never disagree with a man who knows himself.

However, if you would like to cure your self-admitted ignorance of mountain ways, might I suggest that “Our Southern Highlanders” by Horace Kephart as a starting point – especially the Alexander Books edition with the Foreword by me.

Potpourri it is…
When the TVA was first proposed, it was attacked in the same way health reform is being attacked–but it brought electricity to rural areas would have been ignored by private power companies. Now the descendants of those people can use that electric power to complain about big government…

Historical correction: The people were not removed with “little or no recompense” to create the Smokies. They were paid the going rate for their land–but not for their emotional connection to the land (how does one put a price on that?). Some were given the option of remaining there until they died.

A patient is given a series of lab tests by a group of doctors–the majority of the tests are postive for illness but several are negative because of testing errors. Should the patient assume that all the tests are wrong and not seek treatment?

Yes, Jim. I read. A few emails, etc. prove nothing in light of the larger volume of evidence.

If you were to look into other fields of science you’d find that researchers had done similar things. It’s part of the process for researchers to take jabs at each other, try to discredit each other or simply make jokes while researching. Mistakes with equipment and procedure also occur–but it doesn’t disprove the larger body of research.

A patient is given a series of tests. A group of doctors, some of whom have a financial interest in recommending their cure, others only somewhat agree, with reservations which are not noted by the others, many disagree that the illness even exists argueing the symptoms are within the natural variability of human health, analyze the results. The test results contrary to the favored diagnosis are excluded and destroyed. All efforts to determine the methodology of the small number of doctors testing is thwarted, and any doctors disagreeing are ridiculed and shut out of peer reviewed medical journals by the testers’ influence with the journals This is the REAL analogy. I believe, at least the patient should get other opinions, and if necessary, file malpractice claims about the deliberate distortions by the doctors, before agreeing to any treatment.

All doctors (unless a charity clinic) have a financial interest recommending their cure.

..meanwhile the patient’s health continues to decline. The indiviual is led astray by nonmedical persons (with their own self interests) and does not seek medical care. Eventually the patient dies from the illness. Thus it is proven that the majority diagnosis was correct.

The moral to this charming bedtime story? A couple of well meaning doctors “financial interests” could have been met and the patient would have LIVED.

Jim McConalogue is not a scientist, he’s a conservative political analyst with his own interests…

Your analogy and interpretation really only represents your world view and opinion, and not addressing the deliberate corruption of science, ie: selective exclusion of evidence damaging to the “official” narrative, using “evidence” not proven (or even derived) scientifically to promote a previously adopted political agenda. There is plenty of scientists researching within their field of expertise that have identified not just errors, but deliberate misrepresentations of data, some who were contributing authors to the IPCC report, withdrawing their support after having their chapters rewritten to support claimsnot in evidence. Jim McConalogue doesn’t have to be a meteorologist to recognize a person claiming it is raining is actually peeing on his leg.

Responding to the digression from here:http://scrutinyhooligans.us/2010/02/05/ssdpb/
One look here:http://scrutinyhooligans.us/2010/02/05/city-council-agenda-2-9-10/
should show you that I comment on many subjects and can and do often and relevently comment on every agenda item in a council or commission meeting, neither of which has ever addressed overpopulation. In fact the need to pay for municipal contraception makes me a fiscal conservative on other spending items thus often siding with people who would never side with significant municipal contraception spending.
That’s in addition to the fact that municipal contraception can save the world where vegetarianism can’t, making mine the right note and Steward David’s the wrong note.
Plus you irrelevently threaten to censor me for commenting on subject on a thread highly relevent to that subject. It was Mike and his threats that started the digression, not me.